Your employee’ social media account was hacked. How does it affect you?
It would seem that online banking or shopping accounts would be the targets of choice for hackers, but that doesn't seem to be the case. This is why. Social media accounts contain a ton of personally identifiable information, including names, email addresses, dates of birth, places of birth, places of employment (your business! ), names of family members, friends, and pets, as well as names of anniversaries and other events. As a result, they are essentially veritable gold mines of personally identifiable information (PII). Additionally, the more information a cybercriminal has about you if you play games and keep your credit card information, the more likely they are to conduct fraud. All of this information may subsequently be utilized to get into the user's banking and other accounts.
But, how does it matter to you, as a business? If your employee’s personal social media account is hacked, it shouldn’t affect you, as a company, right? Wrong...here’s how it can affect you
- You are in serious trouble if the employee whose social media account was compromised is in charge of managing your business's official social media accounts because hackers will have access to your company account and, as a result, to customer information since you might have customers who follow your business account on social media. The entire issue may cause significant harm to your company's and brand's reputation, as well as penalties and even legal action.
- Even if your employee doesn't manage your company's social media accounts, the hackers could have access to enough of their personally identifiable information to attempt and force open a modest entrance to your IT network.
You can avoid such mishaps by
- Training your staff on social media and cybersecurity best practices including advanced privacy and permission settings for social media accounts
- Make sure your employees have the knowledge and are able to identify and steer clear of phishing and other alerts that could lead hackers to gain access to the accounts.
- Helping your employees understand the importance of practicing good password protection across all their online accounts--social, work, or personal.
- Ensuring they realize that their Facebook or LinkedIn account is not ‘just another online socializing platform’, but an actual gold mine of information and that only those who they really trust should be able to access them. The reason is that sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have a lot of personal information on them.
- Sharing regular Day Zero Alerts and relevant news articles with your staff that keeps them updated on the latest modus operandi and happenings related to cybercrime
Your managed IT services provider will be able to help you in organizing and conducting these kinds of training and awareness sessions at regular intervals for your staff. Contact Rowe Group today to help secure your accounts and personal information.
